Grossular (var: Topazolite) with Uvarovite(?) (ex Kay Robertson Collection)

Item Description

This piece came labeled as coming from "Jacksonville", California, which no longer exists, as the remains sit at the bottom of the Don Pedro Reservoir in Tuolumne County. Now there is another town about 35 miles away called Jackson (which along with Jacksonville were named for Colonel Alden Jackson), but I can't find a report of a Garnet occurence in either location, so I'm leaving it as "Jacksonville" for now. If anybody out there has some insight as to where this piece might actually be from, please let us know so we can update the listing. With that said, the piece is loaded with small but eye-catching dodecahedral crystals of golden "Topazolite" Grossular and stark chrome green Uvarovite (or possibly chrome-bearing Grossular) on host rock matrix. Many of the crystals unfortunately are not fully crystallized, but there are several nice crystals on the specimen that are best viewed under magnification. We used a Canon MP-E 65 mm macro lens to photograph the crystals are illustrate their quality up close. Ex Kay Robertson Collection (#5088). Kay is a prominent California collector, who specialized in European classics (see the article in the March-April, 2007 Mineralogical Record and the 50+ page article in the German Magazine "Mineralien Velt" November-December 2017).